Barfly: The piquant nature of the Bloody Mary

Jeff Burkhart mixes a drink in a shaker on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012 in Novato, Calif. He has written a book, ?Twenty Years Behind Bars,? about his experiences as a longtime bartender and nightclub owner in Marin County. (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)
Frankie Frost

YEARS AGO I worked at restaurant that was on the forefront of the so called "foodie" scene. In fact, it was so far ahead of the curve that it sometimes seemed behind the times.

We were one of the first restaurants to use organic and local products, decades before the term farm-to-table was ever invented. The chef was the first ever to use microgreens. He had to grow them himself because there was absolutely nowhere to purchase them. We used things like sriracha chile paste and yuzu, long before they were common enough to appear in even the most mundane of grocery stores.

As Super Bowl Sunday approached, our enterprising chef (there was no such thing as a bar chef then) took it upon himself to create a drink for the occasion. What he came up with was an organic tomato juice cocktail that included balsamic vinegar, an Indonesian chile paste, garam marsala and local vodka. It was delicious, the perfect combination of sweet, spicy and spirit.

"Vinegar?" said the first person that I made it for. "Who ever heard of vinegar in a Bloody Mary?"

The original Bloody Mary is credited to a French bartender named Fernand Petiot, who worked at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, in or around 1921. Named after the execution happy Tudor Queen (daughter of Henry VIII) who vigorously persecuted her Protestant subjects, the drink originally consisted of just tomato juice and vodka. It is rumored that Petiot first prepared the drink for Vladimir Smirnov, expatriate Russian and founder of Smirnoff vodka, then based in France.

In 1933, Petiot came to the United States, changed his name to "Pete," changed the primary ingredient in his cocktail to gin, and changed the name of the cocktail to the Red Snapper. While at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis Hotel (New York) Petiot added Worcestershire sauce and the spices that we now associate with the drink. He also, eventually, switched back to using vodka, and then back to calling it a Bloody Mary.

Arguably, the Bloody Mary is the first great vodka cocktail, with the Moscow Mule following two decades later and the vodka martini rising to prominence a decade after that, both spearheaded by Smirnoff vodka, which by then was made in the United States.

These days the most common Bloody Mary is made with vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, black pepper and lemon. Sometimes horseradish is added and sometimes celery salt (or seed).

It was just this type of Bloody Mary that the person so disgusted with the thought of vinegar finally requested. Ironically, both Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce are essentially vinegars.

Don't believe me? Read the back of your Tabasco bottle. Go ahead, I'll wait. "Distilled vinegar, red peppers, salt." Chile vinegar. In fact, Tabasco sauce is the only mass-produced "hot sauce" that has only three ingredients. Many have a whole litany of things that only a chemist can identify.

Worcestershire sauce is another thing entirely. It was developed by the British in India and got its name because it was first bottled in Worcester, England. Usually a mixture of garlic, soy sauce, tamarind, onions, molasses, lime, anchovies and vinegar, it is now available both far and wide. Its forerunner, however, is not as well known, at least outside of Asia.

Chinese Black Vinegar, or Chin Kiang vinegar (after its hometown of Zhenjiang, in southern China), its flavor profile is almost an exact match for Worcestershire sauce. It gets there by utilizing some different ingredients, primarily rice, and is often touted for its supposed health benefits. The end result is so similar tasting to Worcestershire sauce that even the most sophisticated connoisseur would be hard-pressed to discern the difference. Black vinegar is often used to flavor hot and sour soup, and it is also far less expensive than traditional Worcestershire sauce. Go figure.

All of which leads us to a few inescapable conclusions:

 Traditional Bloody Marys are nothing more than two vinegar vodka and tomato drinks. Naysayers notwithstanding.

 Don't be afraid to try new things, because perhaps in 10 or 15 years they might be the hottest thing around.

 Chefs belong in the kitchen, not behind the bar.

 Odd that a drink made with a Central American fruit (the tomato), conceived by a Frenchman, named after an English queen, and flavored with an Asian condiment is the unofficial "official" drink of a North American sporting event. Go figure.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of "Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender" as well as an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at www.jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffb@thebarflyonline.com